Listen to this articleA few years ago, someone told me that all men are polygamous. It kind of makes sense, considering that the thing keeping most straight marriages monogamous is the woman putting her foot down and saying, "no one else." And what enforces her statement is her father, who will hire thugs to beat up the roving husband if he tries to bring a third person into the marriage.
A month ago, a reader contacted me and said, "Joseph, the story you really ought to tell is … I think the word is polyandry. It's when there are multiple male partners in a relationship."
I was curious. It made sense to me that sometimes men would naturally form polyandrous relationships. After all, there's no angry woman with an irate dad to scare everyone off. Thinking you’d be curious too, I thought I’d share the reader’s story.
"I'd been dating my first boyfriend for a few years. He's very tall. He's athletic like me, but dark and exotic with black, curly hair, a real GQ-model type.
My first boyfriend and I aren't hairy, but we love hairy guys, which are rare in the gay community. My partner was surfing the internet, on a hook-up site, looking for hairy guys, and he found this redhead he thought I'd be interested in. The man that became our second boyfriend is furry, athletic, spontaneous, and after all, he is a redhead.
Knowing I'd like this hottie he met on the internet, my first boyfriend thought it would be a fun thing for us all to meet at Beans and Brews, since we aren't partiers and don’t go to bars much. The hot, hairy man seemed to be interested in meeting us, too.
We spent time together at the coffee shop, and the redhead was both fun-loving and spontaneous, yet a real sweetie. We had great conversation and left, arranging to start going on weekly hikes with a bunch of men. The hiking was great, and we got to know each other really well over the next few weeks.
After a while the three of us started our relationship and all moved in together. It was great for over a year. I liked how valid we felt together. It wasn't how I would have pictured a triad. We were three college-educated professionals, intelligent and equals. We knew what we were doing. It was so intense, connecting the sexual to the spiritual.
Our relationship ended, probably because the intensity of the feelings was too much at the time. Looking back, I've realized how we could have made it work. We just didn't know enough about threesomes to be prepared for the power of the connections.
So this situation was a double-edged sword. It multiplied everything by a factor of three: the jealousy, the extreme passion, the fear and my insecurities. When one person tells me something I need to work on, I can shrug it off. But when my boyfriends both got together and told me something I needed to improve, I had to take notice and get to work.
That triad was the first relationship I had where I could see myself growing old in a relationship. I gained an understanding of relationships I never had before. I finally understood why my uncle loved my old, flabby, deaf aunt. Her skin from her chin went down to her breasts, and when she held her arms up, that thing under her arms would swing. But he still had the twinkle of passion in his eyes for her. I used to think they were gross together, but with our triad, I finally understood my uncle's lasting love."
I interrupted, "Wait. That's nice, but what about the sex in your triad? I'm a sex reporter, so I need to know about the sex."
He answered, "Well, it was mostly about the relationships, but we are all hot gay men so the sex was great. Just like they say, the cum flew everywhere. A huge benefit was that if I wanted sex and one partner didn't, the other partner usually did.
If one guy was tired, the other two would have sex, so we paired up in every possible combination. It was amazing with all of us at once, too. With three athletic guys going at it, the sex was sexplosive. But the mechanics of sex and what went on inside my head, that's what made it interesting."
